Yonatan Zunger

Thanks for the article, but it is far from a substantive rebuttal, at best I would call it an opinion piece, with its "proof" based on logical errors and assumptions.

> There's a "chicken or the egg" question that needs to come with every assessment of behaviors of groups vs societal expectations and pressures on those groups. People in power, like yourself presumably (despite your insistence of having "no particular horse in the race) will always pretend that things are the way they are because of divine or otherwise pre-determined reasons. It's silly that people who consider themselves so rational are unable to comprehend how obvious this is.

You are mistaking your imagination for reality. You cannot read my mind. Regardless, you are the one advocating social engineering, not me, the onus is (or should be) on you to prove sexism is the cause of gender imbalances at companies. If sexism is so rampant, why is it so difficult to produce any evidence, and why is the "evidence" so commonly produced the equivalent of "bro-culture" conspiracy theories. That this is considered "evidence" only further illustrates how differently the human mind can perceive reality.

> Also lol @ programs for underrepresented groups “increase race and gender tensions”. Get fucked, dude.

What does this refer to? And please refrain from profanity and personal insults. If you have the moral high ground, as you seem to believe, no need to use filthy words and personal insults, your superior…

> then it shouldn't then fire a guy just because he makes an argument other people don't like

He didn't "make an argument other people didn't like". An argument other people might not like could be "guys, I think everything in Google3 sucks and we should rewrite everything in Elixir." This was way beyond that.

I'll refer you to this article, because Yonatan puts it in way better terms than I ever could: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788

> Otherwise you are just ceding the company to cry-bullies

While I was at Alphabet we dealt with plenty of cry-bullies, mostly in the form of conservative-leaning folk who thought they should be allowed to say whatever they pleased because "freedom of speech." Most of these self-styled Constitutional Scholars didn't realize that freedom of speech only applies to the government, not your employer. None got fired, as far as I can tell.

> Google should fire the employees who responded with personal invective against a fellow Googler.

And yet, this guy who is openly telling the world he doesn't trust females to be as interested as he is in the job should be applauded? Not sure I follow.

> He is against discriminating against gender and wants the same hiring and recruiting process regardless of gender.

Which is a completely specious claim to make, considering he most likely doesn't know the distribution of gender and ethnicity in the resumes the company receives and he's most likely not…

The best explanation of why he was going to be fired and why that was the right thing to do (that I read) came from Yonatan Zunger, who had recently left a Human Resources position at Google; especially his third point, in the following post on Medium:

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788

In many way, it was not an unfamiliar sort of rant for the internet, and I was struck by the author's earnestness and apparent sincerity. It's possible that I make too many allowances for behaviour, and it's possible that I'm easily mislead.

I thought his ideas were not in any way useful, or actionable, even had he been correct;

That the ideas were poorly expressed, and full of such fringe 'truths' as are derived, insincerely, from cherry-picked science in order to be sold as snake-oil cures for the cognitive dissonance of the conservative and vulnerable;

That the expression of these ideas was immensely foolish, especially appearing in the context of what I took to have been his initial intent, an appeal of tolerance of diverse viewpoints at Google.

However, I'm always most disturbed by vitriol online when it's in service of beliefs that I share. It makes me deeply uneasy.

These early social influences are a very significant part of the whole diversity/discrimination story and of what the diversity policies are trying to solve. The best ways to improve diversity and fix gender biases are still ‘debatable’. But speaking about the ‘memo’, this particular document is incorrect to the level it doesn’t deserve the debate. Despite the author claimed he created it “all in the name of open discussion”, he mainly created a hostile environment for his coworkers, which is unacceptable (and the fact he didn’t even understand that doesn’t excuse him). I agree with this comment on the ‘memo’ story, which is by far the most sane one: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788
Men are underrepresented in certain professions for sure (and it is a part of the diversity problem), but the current discussion is about underrepresentation in tech, and white men are definitely not the main subject to it (so I don't see any double standards here).

Women are sick of being 'women in tech'. Being 'women speakers' at cons. They just want to be judged on their merits. Quotas are a check balance FOR quality not instead of. That you are finding and eliminating barriers to the best candidates in the hiring process because if you were doing it properly then there would be a balanced hire reflective of society at large. There should be no need for the quotas because as we all know there is no scientific evidence of any gender-based aptitude advantage. However it is evident from the numbers and in the wrongheaded attitudes of some people that there is some considerable adhesion to outdated, backward stereotypes. Yonatan Zunger also ex-Googler explains the diversity policy when he replied to the memo: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788

I concur with him 100% and find it extremely frustrating that these old prejudices persist among otherwise intelligent people.

Consider the Medium piece she cites:

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788

Point #1:
"I’m not going to spend any length of time on (1); if anyone wishes to provide details as to how nearly every statement about gender in that entire document is actively incorrect,¹ and flies directly in the face of all research done in the field for decades, they should go for it. But I am neither a biologist, a psychologist, nor a sociologist, so I’ll leave that to someone else."

In other words: "I have no relevant expertise, but I just know it's wrong."

We would never tolerate that from "the opposing side." I can point you to other articles that do the same.

This is the rallying point for a lot of people, and it's the wrong place to take a stand. It's worth pointing out.